Debunking The Missing American Flag Nonsense In "First Man"
Keith’s note: I am sick and tired of getting emails from conspiracy mongering idiots who think that there has been some sort of massive left wing revisionist editing of history in “First Man” whereby American flags have been erased from history. Contrary to modern style, back in 1969, not every piece of official astronaut work clothing had American flags on them. I am certain NASAWatch readers can find more examples. This took me 2 minutes using Google.
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In a way, that’s impressive. The costume designers seem to have done some research and made the uniforms historical accurate. It isn’t unheard of for a Hollywood production to simply use a vague, personal memory and an opinion about what would look good on the screen.
I’ve got a daughter in scenic design and I get to hear all kinds of “behind the scenes” types of stories. My take is that how authentic your costumes (or sets, props, and etc) are really depends on what your budget and time allowed is for costumes. When you skimp on budget and/or time compromises are inevitable.
The core problem is that no one, as far as I am aware, in the space community has seen the film yet. It appears to only have been shown at the Venice Film Festive so all that are available are trailers and a few accounts from folks not that familiar with the Apollo era (1961-1969) covered in the film. You would think, just for PR purposes, they would invite the remaining Apollo astronauts and mission controllors for a special showing. So really until more folks see it, it’s all speculation on how good, or accurate, a film it is.
Keith, do you know if NASA assisted with the film in anyway? All I found was that the movie was filmed in Roswell, GA with a power plant in Juliette serving for the NASA scenes. Did they use any of the NASA facilities like the old mission control for filming scenes? Did they even reach out to NASA for assistance?
If flags don’t matter, flash Dr Thomas’ ‘China on the Moon’ powerpoint slide again.
Of course a rabid conspiracy theorist will claim that NASA altered the historic photos.
Well, I did at least learn one thing from this whole business. The poor quality of the “one small step” was due to an on-the-fly video format conversion, done on the ground. And the tapes with the original, slow scan video were deemed redundant, reused and overwritten in the early 1980s. (I think that’s similar to the Lunar Orbiter images, except those tapes weren’t reused and overwritten, just lost for a long time.) I’m sure the loss of those tapes sparked all sorts of conspiracy theories. But I think I can live without learning the details.
Another “loss” for lack of a better word is that Neil’s boots were not visible when he took the historic first step, neither in the TV transmission or the 16mm film. In both we only see him from about the knees up when he takes the first step. In the TV transmission you can see him move his left leg outwards slightly and his weight shift, and then he appears to bounce slightly apparently to test his weight on the surface just prior to uttering his historic words. To the casual viewer it doesn’t look like anything really happened, which is why in clips of the first step in documentaries they often use instead the shot of Neil dropping down from the ladder onto the landing pad, which looks more like people would imagine the first step would look like.
Time dilation is one of the most common, technical errors in movies. Almost everything happens faster than it actually does. It’s more dramatic, and it cuts out the dull parts. The same thing has happened in theater for thousands of years. If memory serves, the classic outline for Greek tragedies required all the action to occur in one day, no matter how unrealistic that was.
Yes, I have watched the tapes of the landing and the approach took almost 20 minutes, so that is understandable. They also spent a considerable amount of time securing the LEM before suiting up to start the EVA.
What worries more are some of the quotes from the movie they have put on IMDB.
https://www.imdb.com/title/…
“Janet Armstrong: What are the chances you’re not coming back? Those kids, they don’t have a father anymore! So you’re gonna sit the boys down, and prepare them for the fact that you might never come home! “
and
“Deke Slayton: We’ve got this under control.
Janet Armstrong: You’re a bunch of boys! You don’t have anything under control!”
Its quotes like this that makes me wonder if “First Man” will inspire the next generation to explore space, or to see space exploration as just a bunch of boys playing a game. But again, we have to wait for the movie to come out before making that determination.
I don’t care about this flag business (bankrupt like moon landing hoax). Twitter posts has me very interested that they featured the crew in the quarantine trailer. I always wondered what did these guys do in this Airstream for 20 days (or whatever time)? I imagine debriefs and time to catch up on sleep.
Actually they were only in the Airstream for three days while being transported to Houston. They spent the remainder of their 21 day quarantine inside the lunar receiving laboratory.
That trailer probably felt gargantuan compared to their previous quarters.
I don’t think it is massive left wing revisionist conspiracy, but it shows a real lack of understanding of the historical context of the event and importance of symbolism in that era.
The first few word from this video, from years ago, expresses the feeling of those people who find the omission hurtful. There are people who have real recollections of what was done and why. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
The same Internet that lets actors like Ryan Gosling spout off about things he doesn’t know about, lets people in all walks of life do the same, including conspiracy advocates on all sides. This was started by a comment by Gosling. The best thing is to ignore these comments, but that’s difficult in this day and time (such as with these reply’s). My plan is to wait and see the movie and decide then.
Personally, I hope the trailer had issues because it was done early and that the movie doesn’t have the same flaws (such as a Challenger go at throttle up audio when the X-15 is released). It shows great promise, especially at maybe the first motion picture to accurately and seriously portray a Gemini mission.
Looks like “First Man” is starting to circulate among the critics. Here is a new review of it.
https://www.businessinsider…
“It’s not an astronaut movie in the vein of “The Right Stuff” or “Apollo
13,” where the Space Race missions are the main focus. Though Chazelle’s movie certainly has a lot of NASA mission control shots and astronauts in space, its focus is the life of Neil Armstrong, the first man to ever set foot on the moon. And as the movie shows, he’s a man driven by a ghost from his past.”
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09…
It interesting to ponder why there wasn’t American flags on the NASA suits back in 1969. This was in the thick of the space race with the Soviets. How did we not resist every opportunity to plaster every object in our incredible space program with our patriotic stars and stripes?…Maybe it was simply a time where deeds spoke louder than flags.